Bluetooth is a wireless technology standard for exchanging data over short distances using short-wavelength UHF radio waves in the ISM band from 2.4 to 2.485 GHz from fixed and mobile devices, and may be used for building personal area networks (PANs). Bluetooth is managed by the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG), which has a large number of member companies in the areas of telecommunication, computing, networking, and consumer electronics. The IEEE standardized Bluetooth as IEEE 802.15.1, but no longer maintains the standard. The Bluetooth SIG oversees development of the specification, manages the qualification program, and protects the trademarks.
A piconet is a network which links a wireless user group of devices using Bluetooth technology protocols. A piconet includes two or more devices occupying the same physical channel (synchronized to a common clock and hopping sequence). It allows one master device to interconnect with up to seven active slave devices. Up to 255 further slave devices can be inactive, or parked, which the master device can bring into active status at any time, but an active station must go into parked first.
Some examples of piconets include a cell phone connected to a computer, a laptop and a Bluetooth-enabled digital camera, or several PDAs that are connected to each other.
Other features of the present embodiments will be apparent from the accompanying drawings and from the detailed description that follows.